DmC: Good, Evil and the Love of Art

Mundus is quite self-conscious about his adult acne. He copes by slaughtering the innocent.

Fill this dark soul with liiiiiiiiiiight!

You are Dante, a mythical fusion of demon and angel, or nephilim, that's in the right place at the wrong time. The right place is a sexy dance club and the wrong time is--well--literally any time in the city of Limbo. You see, the king of Hell, Mundus, seeks to control the human population via insidious means and Dante is one of two beings that can actually stop him.

Damn. That's a tall order for some punk kid who just wanted to get his rocks off at a local club. Well, that's fate and fate can be a douchebag at times.

Unlucky for fate, Dante's a bit of a dick too. And that's fine, under that euro-trash exterior beats the heart of Mother Teresa... if Mother Teresa went around doling out holy justice using her trusty broadsword. She very well could have. We might not know the whole story.

This is how I view the world after the 10th shot of tequila.

The Set-Pieces

I'm a personal fan of this game and I think it's all around fun, polished and entertaining, but the area it excels at is the level design. It makes use of this current generation's power to create a dynamic world that can, at any moment, break away and reveal what lies beneath. At a moment's notice, the corridor Dante was walking down could be torn apart, revealing an infinite drop.

My personal favorite level has Dante dive into a reflection of Limbo, turning Dante and the player on their heads. This inverted world is home of one of the dreaded demons, Bill O'Re--What's that? Bob Barbas? Oh yes, Bob Barbas.

He's a pretty nasty guy who uses the media to indoctrinate the masses and blur the truth. Of course this is all fiction, could you imagine? The media slanting things in their favor? Surely that never happens.

First one on the dance floor. Rookie mistake.

Lilith, or a crocodile-skin purse in a wig? You decide.

Another favorite of mine is the pulsating, nightclub lair of Lilith, Mundus' leathery looking concubine. If I did acid, I'm certain this level would call for it. The music is dark and electronic in the best of ways.

Where Bob Barbas' lair was shades of blue and had a cold, dead feel, Lilith's is the antithesis. It boasts deep orange and red tones, with lively music and even livelier set-pieces.

Those are a few of the standouts, but each level has their own flourishes that demand to be seen.

Graffiti

In tune with it's euro-grunge reboot, Devil May Cry also contains wonderful graffiti. In a particular cutscene, the back-story of Dante's devil father and angel mother is elaborated by a storyboard-like fashion. It tells of his father, Sparda, falling in love with an angel, Eva, and their subsequent affair.

Romeo + Juliet with much more death and much less Shakespearean

Like any good love story, it ends with someone dying and someone being chained up for eternity. Y'know, that old cliche.

The style of graffiti in DmC is reminiscent of Banksy's style and, in a way, reflects the state of how video games are viewed. Both mediums aren't considered art by the "experts (heavy sarcasm on the quotes)."

True, I'm certain Duke Nukem Forever doesn't exactly fall into art territory the same way a hastily spray-painted derogatory term doesn't either, but that's all some people see sometimes. Banksy gives us beautiful pieces of street art to prove graffiti is just that--art.

While the story of DmC is fairly straight-forward and Dante can be seen as sophomoric at times, the aesthetic falls in tow with Banksy's. Color me contrarian, but I believe DmC is on the side trying to prove that games are art and they're here to stay.